Primordial Villain With A Slave Harem

Quinlan’s gaze lingered on the vault door as the last of the runes fizzled out in a dying spark.

"They’re coming."

Feng snapped from her trance. "What can I do to help?"

He didn’t look at her. "There are hundreds of these water cultivators. It’s not a battlefield for you."

Her knuckles whitened around her halberd.

"Hide," he ordered in a firm voice.

"What?!"

"Not negotiable."

She hesitated, but then saw the way the four elements coiled around him: unstable, beautiful, dangerous. His qi signature was shifting too quickly for anyone to track, a vortex of potential caught between chaos and mastery.

At that moment, Feng knew she would get in his way if she demanded to fight shoulder to shoulder with him.

So, she nodded once and vanished into the shadows behind the collapsed pillar.

The vault door shuddered.

*BOOM!*

A second pulse tore through the metal. Runes sparked violently before vanishing altogether.

Quinlan rolled his neck and exhaled.

Wind. Fast, elusive. It was time to conduct live testing.

Quinlan rolled his neck, exhaled, and stepped forward.

The third pulse hit the vault, and the door shattered inward with a thunderclap of mist that resulted from the water cultivators’ combat arts colliding with the defenses of their own treasury.

Quinlan didn’t wait any longer.

As the wave of cultivators bravely rushed in, Quinlan punched into their midst with a roaring straight blow, fueled by fire.

*BOOM!*

Flame met mist.

The impact created a sudden vacuum, superheated steam screaming through the opening as the first wave of water cultivators surged in, only to be greeted by a spiraling column of fire that caught over two dozen and hurled them back into the rubble. At least, the ones that survived the initial impact instead of crumbling to the floor lifelessly.

More poured through.

Robes snapped in the heat. Ice-etched spears gleamed. Chains of liquid whip-water lashed toward him as the flood arrived.

Quinlan moved.

He inhaled.

Wind.

He dashed forth from the entry line with immense speed, reappearing in their midst with a burst of wind that made the closest three cultivators stagger.

"What?!"

He struck, but his fist stuttered mid-punch. Fire, meant to follow wind, came too late. The transition stuttered. His Avatar Core needed some refining, and that was something he wasn’t allowed time to do.

Pain stabbed through his forearm.

His breath hitched.

A hollow, grinding pressure bloomed in his chest as he tried to force the next element. Water resisted, refusing to flow properly. ’Why?! It worked before!’ Quinlan grunted inwardly.

Friction inside his meridians flared like barbed wire twisting under his skin.

He staggered from the backlash as a water lash slammed into his side. He attempted to summon earth as a counter, but the signal collapsed into static. He slid back with his ribs aching and blood visible on his lip.

"I rushed, and that ruined the rhythm..." he realized. "One breath at a time."

They swarmed in now.

Another breath, fire this time around. A clean forward snap of the fist, and he executed the man on the spot. The cultivator tried to deflect with a water-infused parry, but Quinlan’s fist connected cleanly, overloading a cultivator’s defenses with sheer brute power.

Quinlan twisted his body and tried to spin into a water-infused leg sweep against the next group of enemies, but the motion was off. The element hesitated. The cold qi ground against the last remnants of fire, like oil resisting water.

His core churned violently. His muscles spasmed.

A blade grazed his shoulder.

He snarled and abandoned the transition, dropping back into raw fire combat arts.

The Third Form of the Blazing Tyrant Fist exploded out of him. His overwhelming fire punch tore through their lines, hurling bodies back like ragdolls.

But more replaced them.

"Too slow... Need something better..."

Another breath, and he changed to the wind. Instead of trying to layer the elements, he shifted his strategy.

A jab.

A whoosh of compressed air fired from his palm, catching one in the throat and sending him flying.

"What sorcery is this?!"

"Is he at the True Foundation stage?! What a monster!"

"Multiple elements and he can manifest them so vividly?!"

Shouts of disbelief rippled through the ranks.

Their panic wasn’t just because Quinlan wielded more than one element—an impossible feat on its own—but because he could manifest them with such intensity and volume.

For most cultivators, combat arts channeled elemental qi inward, reinforcing the body to push it beyond human limits. The fire, water, earth, or wind that occasionally burst out was just residue, the equivalent of exhaust from a speeding engine. A side effect, not the main event.

But Quinlan?

He burned brighter.

Thanks to his dense, overqualified foundation and the old man’s unorthodox arts combined by his primordial vessel and immense elemental affinity, he could harness enough qi to both fuel his body and still produce raw elemental force in the world around him.

A punch that shattered bones and sent a visible arc of flame streaking through the air.

It shouldn’t be possible at his Core Foundation cultivation stage. But it was.

Another slash came to the side. A water cultivator tried to freeze the air around his arm, but Quinlan flared fire, melting the frost instantly and searing through the attacker’s chestplate.

But this, and everything he’d done in this battle, wasn’t mastery. Not the sort of mastery he was chasing. They were just reactions.

He moved on instinct, improvising, never repeating the same sequence. Like a composer searching for a melody.

Furthermore, he was facing tremendous resistance from the elements. Each transition gouged into him. Now that he was using them in active combat, things weren’t moving seamlessly.

His muscles screamed from the internal wear. Meridians flared red with strain. His breath came ragged, shorter each time. His lungs burned. Blood coated his teeth.

Still, he moved.

He ducked toward the ground. Earth. He let it root him, sank his fist into the ground, and sent a shockwave outward. The marble buckled. Dozens lost footing.

He leapt, calling upon the wind again, catching the air and redirecting momentum like a bird shifting wings.

He landed in the middle of a stunned group.

"Let’s try this again."

He inhaled, slowly this time.

Wind. Fire. Water. Earth.

The breaths aligned.

His spine straightened. His center focused.

Avatar Style.

Palm. Foot. Elbow. Fist.

Wind sheared forward. Fire roared behind. Water curved through bodies. Earth shattered the tiles.

A massive chunk of the room collapsed inward. Bodies flew.

That was the moment Feng chose to emerge.

From behind the rubble, she darted into the chaos.

In her hand, a small sphere etched with forbidden runes could be seen.

Quinlan saw it and his heart skipped a beat. "Feng!"

She hurled it high.

The sphere hovered midair.

Then detonated.

A dome of shimmering water magic burst outward, but instead of cleansing or shielding, it imploded. The artifact twisted the water inside the bodies of its victims. Veins bulged. Lungs collapsed. The shriek of forbidden arts echoed through the treasury.

The frontline shattered.

"Let’s run!" she shouted.

Quinlan didn’t hesitate. He spun around, threw his arm around her waist, and rushed toward the exit.

A wall of fire exploded behind them as he did so, sealing off the worst of the chaos. The shrieks of dying cultivators, the ripple of collapsing qi constructs, the splintering marble—all faded behind the roaring inferno.